December 13, 2008

Madoff: Symbol of the Age of Deregulation

More details have been coming out about the role that giant-scale Ponzi artist Bernie Madoff played in the whole Age of Financial Deregulation (a.k.a. casino capitalism), here in the US....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:16 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

December 09, 2008

AIG execs still acting like bandits

In September, the Bush administration announced it would fork $152 billion over to insurance giant AIG to bail it out of its mounting financial woes. Now, AIG CEO Edward Liddy...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:36 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

December 04, 2008

Paulson fails to melt Chinese hearts

Time was, when there was a problem of any size in the global economy, the countries affected would send their finance ministers running to Washington to get help from the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:17 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 29, 2008

Buiter takes on Bernanke for his non-transparency

In his latest blog post today, former ECB chief economist Willem Buiter lays heavily into Fed chief Ben Bernanke for his refusal to disclose vital data about the-- now-- trillions--...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:19 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 26, 2008

Buiter announces collapse of western financial system

Willem Buiter is the former chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He's not only smart; he's well-informed and thoughtful. Today he wrote on his blog: We...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:57 PM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

November 25, 2008

What is the economy FOR?

Thanksgiving is a peculiarly US-American holiday that, by stressing the important bonds of family and friends, provides us a good opportunity to reflect on the often-neglected question of what...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:01 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 15, 2008

Use the Detroit bailout to transform US transit

The Democrats' campaign to win a quick bailout of the US's Big Three, Detroit-based automakers seems to have stalled. That's a good thing, since the only kind of substantive conditionality...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:45 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

November 14, 2008

G-20: When 'Seven' just isn't enough

Pres. G.W. Bush may, as two NYT reporters wrote today, have been the first to insist that this weekend's economic summit in Washington should include the leaders of all the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:52 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 13, 2008

Gender and casino capitalism

I hate to get into reductionist pop psychology but it is very evident that the vast heaving masses of traders one sees in all the photos of trading exchanges, and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:37 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

November 08, 2008

An informed eye on today's casino capitalism

The current, and still escalating, crisis of the western world's "casino capitalism" caught vast numbers of people-- including policy makers and most other members of the political elite-- completely by...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:14 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

A Gandhian talisman for Barack Obama

President-elect Obama faces many daunting challenges. Without a doubt the most daunting will be the still-escalating unraveling of the western-dominated financial system. By the way, yesterday I taped a segment...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:08 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 27, 2008

Differential effects of the financial crisis

I've been arguing for a while now that the present crisis of the western world's "casino capitalism" will have much less of a total impact on China, India, and other...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:03 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 20, 2008

Paulson's outrageous bailout explained

Excellent Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt explains Henry ('Goldman alum') Paulson's current bailout plan in straightforward terms on Willem Buiter's FT blog: While Paulson loathes the idea of giving U.S. taxpayers...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:20 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 10, 2008

Crisis updates: Bush, Buiter

Our "first MBA president" took to the airwaves again this morning to try to shore up the still-sagging confidence of Americans in the country's financial system. Once again, his performance...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:02 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

US financial system: A huge casino

I've been trying to understand how these financial instruments called "Credit Default Swaps" (CDSs) got to be so big. Fortune magazine has a good article on them this week. It's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:39 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

October 08, 2008

China to the rescue?

This is something to read alongside the post I put up here a couple of hours ago. It's an op-ed in yesterday's Financial Times by Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Financial crisis and world power shifts, pt.2

In this recent (introductory) post on this topic I wrote, "The US financial system's current woes have accelerated the decline in American power in the world that has already been...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:02 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

October 07, 2008

Financiers: Where's the remorse?

I don't want to see bankers jumping out of windows. But I do want to see some of these alleged "Titans" of the western financial world expressing-- and enacting-- some...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:30 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Google Reader highlight #2: Willem Buiter on the financial crisis

This is my second pick of current highlights from my Google Reader. Buiter is the former chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, currently Professor of European...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:34 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 06, 2008

And that $25 billion for Detroit...

In all the publicity around the $700 billion bailout for wall Street that became law last Friday, the fact that Congress last Tuesday also appropriated $25 billion to prop up...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:41 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

October 05, 2008

The financial crisis and world power shifts

The US financial system's current woes have accelerated the decline in American power in the world that has already been underway for several years now. This is so for a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:52 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 03, 2008

Wall St. bailout passes, military budget bulge is next

The House of Representatives passed the Wall Street bailout bill this afternoon. So since the Senate passed it earlier, it will now shortly become enacted into law. (Update: The President...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:43 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

A "crude" question about gas prices

With Alaska's governor still proclaiming her dubious energy expertise, I was disappointed that she was not asked to explain the following simple, if "crude" question: With crude oil prices now...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 12:56 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 30, 2008

Bush, economic crisis, and war

Steve Clemons tells us that Bush will make a public pronouncement about the financial crisis at 7:45 a.m. EST Tuesday. This is not a reassuring prospect. When he made his...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:19 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 29, 2008

Fi-Cri: Washington fiddles, Brussels performs, I opine

LSE's Willem Buiter today looks at the fi-cri in a comparative way, comparing the financial stabilization effort underway in the US with that in Europe's Benelux region (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg.)...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:40 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 26, 2008

Distrustfulness, politics, and the financial crisis

So Bush and Paulson failed in their attempt to conclude a deal with the congressional leaders yesterday on the proposed financial bailout. And it was their fellow Republicans in Congress,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:00 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

September 25, 2008

Financial crisis, leadership, and governance

Nobody elected Hank Paulson. Prior to being named US Treasury Secretary in March 2006, he was the CEO of Goldman Sachs, so his credibility as someone who has the interest...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:18 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

September 24, 2008

US citizens' resistance grows to greedy bankers?

There are signs that some influential US bankers and financiers are playing a greedy and self-centered game of, essentially, blackmailing the rest of the citizenry (and everyone else with an...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:56 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 22, 2008

Paulson's Goldman Sachs bonuses...

...were earned for what? John Gapper of the FT has done some digging around, and found that in the period before Paulson quit being GS's CEO to become US Treasury...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:00 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

Washington's 'Air on a G-string'

No comment from Washington yet about Chinese President Hu Jintao's explicit linking of help for the financial crisis to the question of Taiwan. However, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed chief...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:07 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

China's condition to bail out the US: Taiwan?

China's President Hu Jintao has now explicitly linked his country's readiness to show good cooperation in resolving the US financial crisis to the question of Taiwan. Beijing's official Xinhua news...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:50 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 21, 2008

Wall Street crisis: Don't act from panic

Paulson and Bernanke seem to be asking the US Congress to agree to the $500-1,000 billion bailout of Wall Street within the next week, before their regularly scheduled session adjourns....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:11 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

September 20, 2008

China and Japan's stakes in the US financial crisis

Did you know that China has over $900 billion of exposure/investment in US Treasury bills and in debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-- and that the Chinese government...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:49 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

September 19, 2008

Re-imagining America

The eventual size of the US taxpayers' bailout to the troubled financial sector is unknown, but it is bound to be gargantuan. This morning, the ranking Republican on the Senate...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:26 PM | Fulltext link (25 comments)

September 18, 2008

Culpable malfeasance at the SEC?

"Governance"? I think I was too generous in the post I wrote last night on the flaws in the American theory of governance. Well, okay, I did write that the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:31 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Der Spiegel's Pitzke on US market crash

Here. "In fact, it really does look as if the foundations of US capitalism have shattered."...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:51 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 17, 2008

American approach to governance on the line

On Monday, I wrote a long post here on the two big (and escalating) crises that Washington currently faces: the financial meltdown and the roiling escalation in Af-Pakistan. It was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:50 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)